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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

J M Blackman Week 81: She Let Go

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J.M. Blackman’s Picture Choice: 2

Title: She Let Go

She was breaking apart.

Yes, she had been unfinished...no, incomplete for some time. About 47 years now. But this was different.

She was losing her hold. She’d sat on 155 Fieldstone Court, the one with the pink dogwoods lining the sidewalk, since she had died. She’d always had a connection to the house, a connection that probably came from the fact that she’d never been happier than in that house. So, when she died in her sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning (turned out there had been a leak somewhere in or around her water heater; it was hard to get the full story from the snippets of her crying mother and the realtor who had to sell the house after), she stuck around for a little longer. A lot longer.

Either way, the connection had been strong enough that she could rattle windows, sometimes shatter them; she swung cabinets open and closed, slammed doors. She moved most buyers out in months. But they just kept putting it up for sale. And people just kept coming.

Season after season changed: roiling heat to whispering leaves, frozen grass to budding trees. The pink dogwood shed its color and blossomed so many times she questioned how long it had been. And with the leaves came more people just kept pouring into her home, living their lives and leaving her nothing but scraps.

At first, she worked constantly to rid the house of everyone using all the tricks in the book. But that book started to lose pages, the words began to fade. She couldn’t remember how to move things, couldn’t remember why she wanted to.

She felt as if she should stay at this house. She felt like she belonged. Perhaps it was the pink dogwoods--they were beautiful.

But since she couldn’t remember why she should stay besides that bagging feeling, she let go.

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J.M. Blackman is a Language Arts teacheri and a feminist. She endeavors to review nearly everything she reads and is a happy wife. She's a SFF enthusiast, loves dark humor, and has an unhealthy need to protect the image of Batman.